Pre-reform China Research Articles

Labour Relations and Modes of Production under Russia's Institutional Development

The article contributes to a discussion on the taxonomy of labour relations and its relationships with modes of production in the paradigm of post-Marxian historical institutionalism in the tradition by D.C. North and R.M. Nureev. From this perspective the author provides an outline of the concept of labour relations in Russia/ USSR, with the focus on transition processes. The author traces the transitions from kin-ordered and tributary slavery to serfdom, from tributary and commodified serfdom to wage commodified labour, then to tributary and commodified labour under socialism. The outline is based primarily on the quantitative and qualitative evidence from the previous research literature. From the cross-country comparative perspective the author highlights that the cases of slavery during the early modern capitalism, inherited by the Antebellum Southern United States during the Industrial Revolution, as well as mass use of penall abour during the Soviet industrialization effort, moderately replicated in the pre-reform China, demonstrate resumption of institutions of forced labour on the path to modern economy and society. The evidence indicates that this is associated with the processes of military modernization and expansion of the war economy. In its turn, the weakening of the military threat created the possibility of commodified labour relations development. From this perspective, the trend towards expanding their share was formed in the USSR in the 1950s, and Russia’s transition to market relations in the late 1980s – 1990s appeared to be a new stage in the development of this process.

“Art district without artists”: urban redevelopment through industrial heritage renovation and the gentrification of industrial neighborhoods in China

ABSTRACT China’s shift from a socialist to a market economy has resulted in deindustrialization and the emergence of industrial heritage. Despite extensive research on state-led (re)development, limited knowledge exists on the changing role of state work-units (SWUs). Based on the case of Dahua 1935, the research reveals how the top-down production of art districts reshapes traditional work-unit urbanism. It also offers new insights into the gentrification of industrial neighborhoods under the combined forces of the state, SWUs, and private developers. The research finds that the gentrification of industrial neighborhoods cannot be fully captured by either art/artist-led gentrification or state-led gentrification. The changing role of Dahua company from a social provider in pre-reform China to an entrepreneurial and predatory organization in post-reform China has contributed to the remarkable urban transformation. The tension between socialist legacies and capitalist modes of urban (re)development poses a challenge to sustainable industrial heritage-led redevelopment in China.

Building Schools Near the Front Doors of Poor Peasants: The Effects of a Massive Rural Education Expansion in Pre-reform China

Building Schools Near the Front Doors of Poor Peasants: The Effects of a Massive Rural Education Expansion in Pre-reform China

Perceptions of animal welfare and exotic pet ownership in China

AbstractChina plays a critical role in global biodiversity conservation, as both a biodiversity hotspot and for its role in international and domestic animal trade. Efforts to promote wildlife conservation have sparked interest in the attitudes held by Chinese citizens towards animals. Using a questionnaire, we sought to investigate the attitudes of 317 Chinese nationals across 22 provincial-level administrative units regarding their uses of animals, their perceived emotional capacities and views on exotic pets. We reduced the variables related to perceived uses of animals via Principal Component Analysis and ran Generalised Linear Models and Structural Equation Modelling to test relationships between questionnaire-derived variables. Perceptions of animals were divided into two Kellert categories — Utilitarian and Humanistic uses — and 97% of participants believed in animals’ capacities to have and express emotions. We found few interactions, with exotic pets, ie playing with or taking photographs, but the acceptability of owning an exotic pet influenced the likelihood of purchasing one. A belief that animals express emotions encouraged people to look for them as pets but thinking that pets make people happy made exotic pet ownership less acceptable. The shift in attitudes to include humanistic perceptions of animals, a belief in animals as emotive beings and understanding of terminology changed from the previous utilitarian views of pre-reform China, suggesting a readiness to embrace further conservation efforts in China. This deeper understanding of Chinese attitudes toward animals and drivers of the exotic pet trade within China may enable conservation efforts to better target future campaigns.

“The people’s commune is good”: precarious labor, migrant masculinity, and post-socialist nostalgia in contemporary China

ABSTRACT Post-socialist China is characterized by the loss of social and economic safety nets for workers, particularly the most marginalized. Scholars and others have assumed that informal laborers lack the associational power needed to mitigate the precarity of their lives. Drawing on ethnographic data collected between 2004 and 2016 in Chongqing, this article examines the ways in which precariously employed rural migrant men create their own safety nets by drawing on their past experiences of agricultural collectivization in the socialist era to form cooperative associations. It further explores how these men leverage cultural resources from the socialist period to retain male privileges. China’s decades of de-ideologized reforms and waves of informalization of work have not completely deprived migrant workers of the moral and symbolic resources which they use to make claims. Migrant informal laborers’ capacity for collective resistance in post-socialist times is deeply entwined with their gendered experience of work in rural, pre-reform China.

State and the sick role: a study of sick models in the pre-reform China

This study revisited the sick role theory and proposed that the doctor–patient dyadic system be expanded to include state as a major actor to extend the applicability of the theory to other political systems. I argue that state not only exercises coercive power in the social control mechanism, but also practices persuasion in the socialisation mechanism. Drawing on evidence from China, the paper notes that the establishment of the state medicine in the 1950s and 1960s significantly changed illness behavioural patterns of the people covered by public health insurances. To counteract abuse of health insurance and secondary gains, the Chinese Party-state propagated official sick role expectations and norms through sick models—sick persons who thought and behaved as the Party-state expected. Two types of sick models were identified: the cooperative and the ‘defiant’. These models were propagated to serve the Party-state’s political and economic agenda.

Living space and psychological well-being in urban China: Differentiated relationships across socio-economic gradients

Western research has shown that a shortage of living space is associated with poor psychological well-being. By contrast, norms and practices of extended family co-residence, collectivist social organization, and a bureaucratic quota-based housing allocation system were thought to limit the adverse psychological effects of cramped dwelling conditions in pre-reform China. As these buffers may be weakening with the dramatic housing reforms, socio-economic, and cultural changes taking place in post-reform urban China, we use data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies ( N = 13,367) to re-examine the relationship between living space and psychological well-being in contemporary Chinese cities. In particular, we examine the ways in which this relationship is moderated by family wealth and community poverty in order to explore how subjective experiences of dwelling space are shaped by one’s relative socio-economic position. The results show that cramped living conditions are significantly associated with poor psychological well-being in post-reform urban China. Importantly, the psychological implications of cramped dwellings may vary with family and particularly community socio-economic status as this association tends to be stronger among more affluent families and communities than among those that are more impoverished. Taken together the findings indicate that uneven socio-economic development, segmented cultural change, and drastic housing reforms within China’s cities may be interacting to configure people’s housing experiences and health outcomes.

Living space and psychological well-being in urban China: Differentiated relationships across socio-economic gradients

Western research has shown that a shortage of living space is associated with poor psychological well-being. By contrast, norms and practices of extended family co-residence, collectivist social or...

Interpreting Chinese Hukou System from a Foucauldian Perspective

The Chinese hukou system has been a hot topic in China study for decades. It not only restricts access to state-sponsored benefits (such as food and housing provision) in pre-reform China, but continues to influence the local-led urbanization in post-reform era. However, few studies have explained why this highly exploitative system persists in China. This paper tries to contribute some insights to interpretation of this issue based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality. It is argued that Chinese hukou system is actually a power relation consisting of a series of governmental technologies based on differentiation, surveillance and calculation in pursuit of economic growth and political stability. The governmental techniques and rationality within the Chinese institutional system make the hukou system persist in modern China.

Housing Differentiation Under Market Transition in Nanjing, China*

Based on a large-scale household survey conducted in Nanjing in 2005, this study examines housing differentiation between and within groups defined by different socioeconomic characteristics and analyzes institutional and market determinants of housing differentiation under market transition. It is worth noting that, although the degree of housing differentiation between different socioeconomic groups is high, the differentiation within each group is even more significant. This suggests an intensified housing differentiation in the Chinese city. Institutions inherited from the socialist period and the emerging market mechanisms are intertwined to contribute to housing differentiation after the introduction of housing reform. In the postreform era, whereas some institutional factors were weakened, other institutional factors such as the hukou system and the work unit system continue to be significant. Furthermore, similar to other postsocialist countries, the pattern of housing inequality in prereform China remains and even consolidates after economic reforms; that is, vested groups continue to enjoy better housing conditions under a market economy, and the disadvantaged groups are entrapped in a housing predicament. Nevertheless, market factors have also become decisive, which is mainly reflected in the significant housing differentiation between groups categorized by educational attainment and household income.

Introduction to the Special Section: Poverty and Inequality in China

Introduction to the Special Section: Poverty and Inequality in China

State-Sponsored and Spontaneous Urbanization in the Pearl River Delta of South China, 1980-1998

State-sponsored urbanization prevailed in the prereform China. A new track of spontaneous urbanization has emerged since 1978. However, state-sponsored urbanization has continued to be an important process of urbanization in the reform period. The Chinese pattern of urbanization since 1978 is distinguished by dual-track urbanization. This paper uses the dualtrack urbanization approach to examine the urbanization process in Pearl River Delta in the reform period. Whether urbanization takes place in main cities or low-order settlements has been a lasting theme of the urbanization inquiry. This issue is assessed by an analysis of the relative concentration and deconcentration of urban population among four groups of settlements: the primate city, cities with special economic zones, prefecture-level cities and county-level cities/counties. Contrary to previous research, it is found that both state-sponsored and spontaneous urbanization are driving a dispersed pattern of urbanization in the region.

The Labor Income Tax Equivalent of Price Scissors in Prereform China

In a centrally planned economy, the government can raise investable resources through price and wage manipulation. By treating price and wage controls as an implicit labor income taxation, we assess the scale of resource transfers from households to the government in prereform China. The implicit tax revenue during the 1964 to 1978 period is estimated at 10.4% of GDP. This implicit tax led to implied reductions of 31.1 and 37.8%, respectively, in the price of agricultural goods and in the nonagricultural-sector nominal wage during the 15 years. The equivalent average labor income tax rates were 16.7 and 24.1% for agricultural and nonagricultural workers.J. Comp. Econom., September 2000, 28(3), pp. 524–544. Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong.

To Get Rich is Glorious: Rising Expectations, Declining Control, and Escalating Crime in Contemporary China

After the Communist revolution, China had a relatively low crime rate. However, since the economic reform of the late 1970s, the crime rate has increased considerably. Why has crime increased when most people are doing better economically and have access to many more opportunities to improve their lives? Part of the reason may be found in the strong official emphasis on the radical new goal of making money, along with the unequal distribution and inadequate legal regulation of the means to economic success. Another factor is the loosening of formal and informal controls as a result of the changes in social structure that accompany economic reform. Control theory, developed to explain crime inWestern societies, is applied in new ways in this article to fit the unique control structures that existed in prereform China.

Earnings and education in China's transition to a market economy Survey evidence from 1989 and 1992

Analyses of returns to educational investments in China, based on 1981, 1985, and 1986 data, have yielded surprisingly low and sometimes negative rates. Given the extent of wage compression in prereform China, it is expected that human capital accumulation be increasingly recognized and rewarded as the Chinese economic reforms progress and market forces permeate the work place. Econometric analysis of newly available data, gathered in 1989 and 1992, reveals that returns to education for new labor force entrants, for workers who have recently obtained their current positions, for young people, for workers in recently established firms, and for collective, joint-venture, and private-sector workers are in the range expected of East Asian market economies with well-functioning labor markets.

Workers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation

Previous articleNext article No AccessWorkers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous FederationAndrew G. Walder, and Gong XiaoxiaAndrew G. Walder Search for more articles by this author , and Gong Xiaoxia Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 29Jan., 1993 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2949950 Views: 54Total views on this site Citations: 34Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1979-1995), which is continued by The China Journal (1995-present). 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